Maine Fellowship of Christian Writers

I spent last Saturday at the annual 1-day conference of the Maine Fellowship of Christian Writers. This was my second year holding a couple of workshops with them. Last year's found us in Belfast, Maine, a lovely waterfront town. This year, we were farther inland in Waterville, a city between the capital, Augusta, and the 2nd largest city, Bangor. For me, it meant a 3-hour drive, but it was well-worth it to spend a day in the company of fellow writers, both of fiction and non-fiction. Workshops ranged from writing devotionals for publications to writing dialogue for children's literature. My workshops focused on plotting & pacing your novel, and writing the synopsis. As anyone who's tried to publish a novel knows, you have to write a synopsis (summary of it) for the prospective editor to read. Most of us hate writing those, but especially those "seat of the pants" writers who write more by instinct than by following a well-thought-out plot. Both types of writers eventually get where they're going--to "The End," but the first group has a hard time analyzing how exactly she does it.Pictured here at the end of the day are fellow writers Carla Gade (Barbour) and Susan Page Davis (Steeple Hill Suspense, Barbour and Moody Publishers). The church where the conference was held had recently had a VBS, so you can see we used their props for our photo op.